Promising Technologies and Solutions for Supporting Human Activities

in Conﬁned Spaces in Industry

Taynan Roger Silva

1 a

, Bruno Naz

ario Coelho

2 b

and Saul Emanuel Delabrida

3 c

Graduate Program in Instrumentation, Control and Automation of Mining Processes (PROFICAM),

Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP) and Vale Institute of Technology (ITV), Ouro Preto, Brazil

Control and Automation Engineering Department (DECAT), Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP), Ouro Preto, Brazil

Department of Computing (DECOM), Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP), Ouro Preto, Brazil

Keywords:

Conﬁned Spaces, Occupational Health and Safety, Human-computer Interaction.

Abstract:

Although there is a growing concern about accidents and illnesses at work, global statistics still reveal alarming

data. It is estimated that 2.78 million people die each year worldwide due to labor factors. In this regard,

information systems and automation systems applied to occupational health and safety are gaining prominence

for accident prevention. One of the high risk activities that have adopted technology as an ally is working in

conﬁned spaces. Currently, non-human entry robotic systems have been widely adopted for this purpose.

However, these solutions do not always cover all scenarios, still requiring humans to perform tasks in those

locations. Thus, it is expected that the new era of work in conﬁned environments will be increasingly guided

by hybrid systems of human-computer interaction. Some solutions from this perspective foresee the use of

wearable computing, virtual reality and augmented reality to assist at these locations. The challenges in

adopting these new technologies still consist in the characteristics of the environments themselves, which are

hostile places with natural blockages for traditional communication and data transmission signals.

1 INTRODUCTION

The impacts that technological changes have had in

the various sectors of economy are a constant theme

in debates about the future of work. Advanced manu-

facturing raised the industry to a new level of produc-

tivity, allowing the creation of more agile machines

and processes through the integration of technologies

such as robotics, internet of things (IoT) and artiﬁcial

intelligence.

In the ﬁeld of Occupational Health and Safety

(OHS), industrial conditions and workplaces have

also evolved into more ergonomic and safer environ-

ments. Since the First Industrial Revolution started in

the 18th century, where steam engines reduced man-

ual effort, researchers and engineers from all over the

world are increasingly striving to make these environ-

ments more accessible and less harmful to human be-

ings.

The massive use of advanced tools, more ro-

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4088-3189

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2809-7778

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8961-5313

bust protective equipment and better supervised work

practices show a more assertive involvement of em-

ployers and workers in solving OHS-related problems

in recent years (Badri et al., 2018).

However, the problem is that the technology that

increased production efﬁciency and performance is

also the technology that created new job scenarios

with adverse risk and hazard conditions for the health

and safety of employees. In mining, for example,

technological solutions have allowed access to and

exploration of deep deposits, where large soil move-

ments place workers in unhealthy and dangerous en-

vironments (Cattabriga and Castro, 2014).

To get an idea of the statistics on occupational

health and safety, in 2017 a survey estimated that 2.78

million people die worldwide each year due to labor

factors (H

ainen et al., 2017). Globally, it is esti-

mated that 1,000 deaths per day are caused by direct

accidents and 6,500 by work-related illnesses (Inter-

national Labour Ofﬁce, 2019). The ﬁgures also show

a general increase in the total number of deaths: from

2.33 million deaths in 2014 to 2.78 million in 2017

ainen et al., 2017).

These changes have a major impact on operational

Silva, T., Coelho, B. and Delabrida, S.

Promising Technologies and Solutions for Supporting Human Activities in Conﬁned Spaces in Industry.

DOI: 10.5220/0010498205730580

In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2021) - Volume 2, pages 573-580

ISBN: 978-989-758-509-8

573

health and safety and are expected to continue to do

so in the future (International Labour Ofﬁce, 2019).

Thus, the need for new engineering solutions applied

to OHS is evident.

Some solutions in this regard foresee the use of

wearable computing, virtual reality and augmented

reality for human assistance in dangerous and diverse

activities. Wearable smart devices are already being

used to monitor worker fatigue and fall detection, for

example (International Labour Ofﬁce, 2019).

In this perspective, this paper’s main objective

is to review and investigate the technologies already

used in conﬁned spaces and also to describe some

promising solutions to support human activities in

these environments, since working in these places is

still classiﬁed as high risk and harmful to employees’

health. Thus, this study is a preliminary investiga-

tion for the improvement of these technologies and

serves as a theoretical foundation for the development

of wearable devices in conﬁned spaces. The work, in

current progress by the authors and still in its infancy,

proposes to display monitoring data on augmented re-

ality glasses in a more practical and intuitive way for

conﬁned workers. An example application under de-

velopment is the computational coloring of naturally

colorless gas concentrations for users of these glasses.

2 CONFINED SPACES

The concept of conﬁned spaces is understood as any

area not designed for continuous human occupation

that has limited means of entry and exit. According to

the US Occupational Safety and Health Administra-

tion (OSHA), three characteristics deﬁne a conﬁned

space: (i) it is large enough and conﬁgured so that an

employee is able to enter and perform the work, (ii)

it has limited entry or exit opening, (iii) and it is not

designed for human occupation (OSHA, 1993). Ex-

amples of conﬁned spaces include, but are not limited

to, silos, ducts, boilers, storage tanks, sewage ditches,

chimneys and underground galleries.

When developing a regulatory procedure on work

in conﬁned spaces, OSHA estimated, in 1993, that 4.8

million entrances into conﬁned spaces were made an-

nually in the United States and they involved an av-

erage of 1.6 million workers and 63 deaths (Burlet-

Vienney et al., 2015).

The most common causes of accidents in these

places are ﬁres, explosions, spontaneous combustion

and contact with extremely high temperatures (Botti

et al., 2017). Tasks in conﬁned spaces involve physi-

cal, chemical, biological and ergonomic risks to the

health of employees, the risk of asphyxiation and

intoxication being among the most common (Botti

et al., 2018).

These risks are present in several industrial seg-

ments. In mining, in non-ferrous metal mining ac-

tivities, the accumulation of methane gas in coal

mines and toxic concentrations of hydrochloric acid

are some of the sources of risks and dangers to

which workers are exposed in these locations (Dr

ager,

2015). In the chemical industry, a case study in 2005

reported a fatal accident in the US where two workers

at a reﬁnery were asphyxiated inside a conﬁned space

ﬁlled with nitrogen (CSB, 2005).

Simply put, the most effective risk control mea-

sure for working in a conﬁned space is not to enter

the conﬁned area (Botti et al., 2018). In this trend,

robotic systems and stand-alone operations for work

in conﬁned environments have gained prominence. In

a systematic review of automated solutions for enter-

ing these places, 60 scientiﬁc articles that document

the use of these tools, produced between 1999 and

2015, were cataloged (Botti et al., 2017).

At ﬁrst, one can imagine that the future of con-

ﬁned spaces will be dominated by these innovative

non-human entry technologies. However, they are

still limited to certain industrial operations such as

cleaning, inspection and maintenance. Moreover, be-

cause they are places with rigid and divergent oper-

ational parameters, autonomous solutions for work

in conﬁned environments are limited to the activities

to which the solutions were initially designed (Botti

et al., 2017).

From this perspective, it is certain that research

in this area will considerably evolve the ﬂexibility

of robots for access in distinct operations, but even

so, certain activities will still require human pres-

ence in these locations. To remove automatic cleaning

residues in naval tanks, for example, human interven-

tion is still required (Botti et al., 2017).

Perhaps the greatest gain obtained from the inser-

tion of robots in conﬁned environments is the reduc-

tion in the time that workers remain in these places.

Thus, the work done in these environments tends to

be guided by hybrid systems of human-computer in-

teraction.

This paradigm shift is observed not only in con-

ﬁned spaces, but also in the industry as a whole. This

is what enthusiasts consider the philosophy of the re-

cent Industry 5.0, where humans work together with

robots or computer instruments integrated into their

bodies to improve their physical, sensory and cogni-

tive capabilities (Longo et al., 2020).

If in Industry 4.0 technology has advanced to-

wards interconnecting machines and cyber-physical

systems to the processes, in Industry 5.0 the focus

ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

574

is on collaboration between machines and humans.

The Fifth Industrial Revolution will pair men and ma-

chines to further utilize intelligence and creativity in

order to increase the process efﬁciency by combining

workﬂows with smart systems (Nahavandi, 2019).

The challenges regarding the adoption of these

new technologies still consist in the characteristics of

the environments themselves, which are quite hostile,

poorly lit, with the presence of water, dust and natural

blockages for traditional communication signals.

Finally, it is important to point out that most of

the existing conﬁned spaces are considered poten-

tially explosive atmospheres, which requires that the

equipment developed speciﬁcally for these places be

certiﬁed by national and international standards.

3 RELATED WORK

The use of technological solutions for accident pre-

vention and occupation of conﬁned spaces is already

a reality. With the accelerated digital revolution in re-

cent years, the use of these solutions is increasingly

frequent.

When it comes to accident prevention in these en-

vironments, today the main contributions of IoT tech-

nologies are geared to improve the ﬂow of informa-

tion between all actors involved (Botti et al., 2015)

and also to improve gas measurement and monitoring

processes.

Information systems and industrial automation

systems are already widely used in conﬁned space

construction projects. As referenced by (Burlet-

Vienney et al., 2015), sometimes a problem at the

project level can explain the underlying cause of an

accident.

A work by researchers from Pakistan has imple-

mented an integrated solution based on BIM (Build-

ing Information Modeling) and Wireless Sensor Net-

work (WSN) for conﬁned spaces in civil construc-

tion environments. BIM, according to (Eastman et al.,

2011), is a technology that allows to digitally create

one or more accurate models of a building. These

computer-generated models contain precise geometry

and data needed to support construction, manufactur-

ing and acquisition activities through which the build-

ing is done.

In the case of this Pakistani research, the solu-

tion, called CoSMoS, uses the Autodesk Revit Ar-

chitecture software to map and visualize the conﬁned

spaces in speciﬁc constructions, while the environ-

mental monitoring of these spaces is carried out by

the commercial motto TelosB, which uses the TinyOS

open-source operating system (Riaz et al., 2014).

In this solution, data from sensors present in the

conﬁned environments are read directly in Revit, en-

abling managers and occupational health and safety

teams to more easily assimilate the places with higher

accidents risks. The choice of TelosB for this project

takes into account the motto’s capacity to withstand

aggressive and hostile environments, which is one of

the main characteristics of conﬁned spaces.

Regarding the identiﬁcation of conﬁned spaces

and the assessment for entry permissions, some infor-

mation systems propose more assertive and less sub-

jective evaluation methods for risk prevention. In this

scenario, in 2016 (Botti et al., 2016), a tool for the

identiﬁcation of such spaces in the industry has been

developed. The goal was to create an effective mech-

anism in order to prevent workers from entering high

risk areas. The tool was able to calculate a risk index

to allow or prohibit workers from entering the space.

The measurement of gases in these environments

also has several technological resources. Today, elec-

trochemical and catalytic sensors can accurately mea-

sure hundreds of toxic gases. Selective ﬁlters are

being better developed to increase the sensitivity of

these sensors and reduce false alarms. The use of in-

frared sensors for measuring hydrocarbon gases has

also been gaining ground, since there is no wear and

tear for this type of sensor, unlike electrochemical

and catalytic ones. Current technology also allows

portable meters to be modular, where the user has the

autonomy to change and replace the gas sensor car-

tridges according to the types of gases expected for

each environment. Some speciﬁc detectors are al-

ready capable of detecting potential drops and auto-

matically trigger an alarm for the competent authori-

ties.

On robots in conﬁned spaces and other non-

human autonomous systems for entry into these

places, present technologies focus on industrial robots

and unmanned aerial vehicles. Among the case stud-

ies for inspection activities analyzed by (Botti et al.,

2017) are the robots NERO (Nuclear Electric Robot

Operator) and SADIE (Sizewell A Duct Inspection

Equipment), which inspect reactors and ducts through

non-destructive testing. Between the robots for clean-

ing in conﬁned spaces, the study mentions the Re-

TRIEVER robotic arm, which is remotely controlled

for waste removal in nuclear tanks.

As negative points of robotic arms in conﬁned

spaces, one can highlight the fact that the movements

of these types of robots are mechanically limited in

closed environments where the surfaces have several

edgings and small radii of curvature, which increases

the chances of collision. Another restriction arises

from the passage of cables and hoses within the work-

Promising Technologies and Solutions for Supporting Human Activities in Conﬁned Spaces in Industry

575

ing space of the robotic handler, since these types of

connections cannot be avoided to a great extent.

The research also states that, in all cases of ana-

lyzed studies, the applications of robots in conﬁned

spaces are limited and designed for speciﬁc applica-

tions. In this sense, it was found that of the cata-

loged automated entry technologies, none of the so-

lutions simultaneously performs cleaning, inspection

and maintenance tasks, but only one or two of these

activities.

Thus, due to these limitations and also to the high

costs of developing speciﬁc robotic systems, it is ex-

pected that other more affordable technologies with

greater applicability will gain prominence in the new

era of conﬁned environments.

As referenced, these technologies tend to increas-

ingly assist humans in these locations, so that the

worker stays as little time as possible in the conﬁned

environment and their activity can be fast and efﬁcient

from available technological resources.

4 PERSPECTIVES

4.1 Mobile and Wearable Technologies

A good risk management program is needed to efﬁ-

ciently control the hazards to which workers are ex-

posed in conﬁned spaces. In this sense, metrology is

a fundamental pillar in helping with this task: mea-

suring and monitoring are important and fundamental

actions for the adoption of preventive measures.

In regards to the measurement and monitoring of

gases in conﬁned spaces, the main national and in-

ternational health and safety agencies suggest mini-

mum and maximum levels of concentrations of these

elements within these environments, which must be

maintained and monitored throughout the worker’s

occupation time.

Nowadays, these measurements are carried out al-

most exclusively by portable meters known as ex-

plosimeters, done either by the employee who occu-

pies the space or by third parties who supervise the

service outside the entrance for rescue operations.

The main problem with the use of these portable

meters is that they require certain efforts from users

and the OHS team for their full utilization: Before en-

try, it is necessary to inspect the equipment, conﬁgure

it, calibrate it and provide it with power. Afterwards,

it is necessary to display and table the collected data,

validate results and perform other actions that make

the measurement and monitoring process tiring.

According to (Bolzani, 2004), this interaction

with portable measuring devices is, in a way, a poor

Figure 1: Gas measurement by portable meters: measure-

ment performed by the worker himself (left) and measure-

ment performed by the watchman (right). Source: Author,

adapted from (Vale, 2015).

form of integration of computer systems, not being

the most ideal for this type of operation. Furthermore,

when using portable meters in conﬁned spaces, the

operator loses some of his mobility, not being able to

work with his hands completely free in some cases, as

shown in the example in Figure 1.

For the next coming years, it is expected that the

gas monitoring in conﬁned spaces will be done by

wearable devices and wearable computers coupled to

the workers’ personal protective equipment. A smart

safety helmet with methane gas and carbon monox-

ide sensors, for example, has already been developed

to alert workers in underground coal mines when the

concentration of these harmful gases exceeds a certain

limit (Hazarika, 2016).

This form of monitoring in these environments

will allow direct and instant access to information

through data that will be directed to smart panels

developed for managers and work safety teams and

transmitted in real time. The equipment will also be

able to send autonomously send requests for help and

issue evacuation signals in case of emergency.

Even though this type of monitoring is more phys-

ically tied to the body of the employees, it is less intru-

sive than handheld computing, since it will not require

the user’s complete attention to manage it. Mobility

with wearable devices is also better when compared

to portable devices. The tendency is that wearables

and smart protective equipment will present decreas-

ing weights in the future, so that the user will not no-

tice or be bothered by their use.

In addition, such computers coupled to the uni-

forms will also allow real-time monitoring of the em-

ployee’s vital signs in the conﬁned space through sev-

eral biosensors, including body temperature sensors,

heart rate monitoring sensors, blood pressure sensors

and blood glucose and oxygen level sensors. Since

gas meters can provide false alarms due to cross-

sensitivity of the sensors, monitoring of workers’ vi-

ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

576

tal signs by wearable devices can, for example, help

in the detection of oxygen insufﬁciency inside a con-

ﬁned space, according to the psychophysiological ef-

fects evidenced by the equipment.

4.2 Communication in Conﬁned Spaces

All these sensors and equipment must be connected to

low power wireless networks created exclusively for

conﬁned and underground environments, where tra-

ditional communication signals such as radio and 3G

or 4G mobile phone networks will not be available

nor be allowed due to the possibility of causing ex-

plosions.

Wireless mesh networks are likely to be present

in the future of conﬁned spaces due to their robust-

ness, ease of scheduling and high integrity. In this

sense, the wearables themselves will have embedded

repeater systems and ampliﬁers to support commu-

nications in the adopted networks. Data routing be-

tween devices will also have robust and consistent al-

gorithms for merging data into smart messages.

An emerging technology pointed out by

(Kennedy, 2006) and that has practical applica-

tion for technological use in conﬁned spaces is

the LR-WPAN (Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area

Network) communication network associated with

the IEEE 802.15.4 and Zigbee standards. Parameters

such as low power consumption and low data rate in a

wireless mesh network have been observed in several

tests carried out by the researcher in underground

mines.

In conﬁned environments where 5G networks are

already implemented and where this type of commu-

nication signal is available and suitable for use, it will

be possible to transmit photographs and videos in real

time with high image deﬁnition.

In China, mining companies have successfully

deployed 5G-based underground stations to promote

smart mining in coal mines. These bases may be part

of the future of conﬁned spaces according to the par-

ticularity of each environment.

The gains are countless with these technologies.

The thick dust underground, for example, naturally

interferes with the signal from traditional video and

infrared cameras, but in 5G-based equipment the in-

terference is little.

4.3 Augmented Reality and Virtual

Reality

The use of augmented reality (AR) and virtual re-

ality (VR) in conﬁned spaces will also enable spe-

cial features to improve worker efﬁciency and safety.

Equipped with smart glasses, employees will be able

to assess all the information collected by the sensors

in the conﬁned space in a simple and intuitive way,

without the handling of the measuring equipment it-

self, as shown in Figure 2.

The augmented reality in conﬁned spaces will

be mostly applied in maintenance activities, process

monitoring, quality inspection and ergonomic evalu-

ation. Virtual reality, on the other hand, should be

mainly applied for training actions in conﬁned spaces

and in simulations of rescue processes in these places.

Still on the use of augmented reality in these en-

vironments, it will allow the visualization of work in-

structions for users according to the recommendations

of the OHS team. Such equipment will allow remote

collaboration between humans so that workers outside

the environment collaborate with conﬁned workers.

Higher risk areas will also be signaled on the virtual

glasses according to the elements found in the envi-

ronment, as in the case of Figure 2, where a conﬁned

gas valve is highlighted to the operator.

Figure 2: Using augmented reality to visualize sensed in-

formation in the conﬁned space. Operator using Trimble

Connect and Microsoft HoloLens. Source: Author, adapted

from (Trimble, 2021).

Along with the glasses, video cameras will be inte-

grated with the used protective equipment. Besides

capturing images and videos in various situations,

they will process computer vision algorithms to as-

sist with measurement, equipment identiﬁcation and

environmental recognition tasks.

As an example of the use of cameras in under-

ground mines, an application described by (Haas

et al., 2016) can be highlighted, which uses a video

camera connected to a dust monitor to automatically

analyze the concentration of breathable silica in the

air.

Neural networks can also be developed to quickly

classify and detect venomous animals in dark parts

of conﬁned spaces. The detection and recognition

of these animals by artiﬁcial intelligence will allow

the use of appropriate tools for environmental risk re-

Promising Technologies and Solutions for Supporting Human Activities in Conﬁned Spaces in Industry

577

moval and will enable more appropriate medical treat-

ment should an accident with these animals occur.

4.4 Machine-human Collaboration

Regarding the future of robots in conﬁned spaces, the

most recent projects that are still in the development

phase foresee humanoid robots transiting in these en-

vironments.

Some engineers and designers have already con-

ducted relevant studies that allow this futuristic vi-

sion. While (Buchanan et al., 2019) proposes a hexa-

pod robot that transits from the autonomous form

to the body form in order to navigate in conﬁned

spaces, (Henze et al., 2017) proposes a humanoid

robot with hands, feet, knees and elbows, which has

the agility, the robustness and the balance required for

these spaces.

Collaboration between robots and humans will

also be a reality. Both will work together in a synchro-

nized manner on routine and standardized tasks. In

order to improve workers’ safety in situations that re-

quire human-robot interaction, the use of augmented

reality will allow the creation of visible paths for the

robot’s movement, avoiding collisions with objects

and humans.

5 CHALLENGES AND

LIMITATIONS

Imagining the future of conﬁned spaces is a challeng-

ing task, since building equipment for these places

represents a major challenge for the coming years, es-

pecially when the environment is confusing and com-

plex. However, imagining solutions based on already

existing tools is a ﬁrst step towards making the great

technological revolutions actually happen.

All the solutions cited above may at ﬁrst seem

simple, although promising, but the fact is that the

construction and prototyping of these devices is not

a reality due to high development costs, due to the

equipment certiﬁcation requirements for use in poten-

tially explosive atmospheres, and due to the conﬁgu-

ration of conﬁned spaces.

In a search conducted in ﬁve academic search

engines (IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Sci-

enceDirect, SpringerLink and Google Scholar), no

history of an industrial wearable device developed ex-

clusively for human use in conﬁned spaces was found.

The searched terms are listed in Table 1, with most

of the similar equipment identiﬁed for these envi-

ronments being developed for robots and unmanned

aerial vehicles.

Table 1: Search strings.

# Search String

1 ”Conﬁned Space” AND ”Wearable”

2 ”Conﬁned Space” AND ”Virtual Reality”

3 ”Conﬁned Space” AND ”Augmented Reality”

4 ”Conﬁned Space” AND ”Mixed Reality”

5 ”Conﬁned Space” AND ”Robot”

In the case of augmented reality glasses to be de-

veloped exclusively for use in these places, the op-

erational requirements demand that the glasses do

not block the operator’s peripheral vision, allowing

him to see both virtual and real objects. In this re-

gard, the use of HMDs (head-mounted display) for

these operations is an alternative. However, the high

costs of these devices (ranging from US$ 700 to US$

5000) are one of the main obstacles to the adoption of

this equipment on a large industrial scale (D’Angelo,

2018).

For conﬁned spaces, there is also the fact that the

equipment certiﬁcation for potentially explosive ar-

eas has, in itself, a high cost for building these pro-

totypes. If the conﬁned spaces are minimally clas-

siﬁed as Zone 1 according to IEC 60079 (explosive

atmospheres), then the possible protections for elec-

trical and electronic equipment of this type should be

Ex d (explosion-proof), Ex i (intrinsic safety), Ex e

(increased safety) or Ex p (pressurized enclosures).

Currently, few companies develop wearable in-

dustrial computers suitable for use in classiﬁed ar-

eas, such as the intrinsically safe HMT-1Z1 equip-

ment shown in Figure 3 and manufactured by Real-

Wear. This shows that research and actions for the

construction and adoption of these devices should be

encouraged.

Figure 3: HMT-1Z1 equipment manufactured by RealWear

and suitable for use in classiﬁed areas, in accordance with

the ATEX and IECEx guidelines. Source: (RealWear,

2020).

Another barrier to be addressed regarding the use

of wearable computing and wearables embedded in

workers’ uniforms in conﬁned environments consists

ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

578

in weight reduction and better adaptability of wear-

ables to the user’s body so that the devices meet the

ergonomic requirements of the application. As a main

premise for a good user acceptance, wearable com-

puting should not be invasive and, above all, it should

provide freedom of body movements.

Finally, another challenge related to intelligent at-

mospheric monitoring in these environments by us-

ing technological equipment concerns the conﬁgura-

tion of gases found in conﬁned spaces. This is be-

cause some gases such as LPG and hydrogen sulﬁde

are heavier than air and therefore accumulate at the

bottom of the environment. Other lighter gases, such

as methane, hover at the top of the space. And there

are also gases with the same speciﬁc weight as air, as

is the case of carbon monoxide, which is concentrated

in the middle of the conﬁned environment (Ara

ujo,

2006).

Today, this situation requires operators to take gas

measurements at all parts of the environment, hav-

ing to frequently change the position of the measuring

probes, which are ﬂexible hoses connected to suction

pumps for gas analysis by the sensors.

From an ergonomic point of view, the operation

of moving the probe makes the monitoring process

strenuous and tiring for the operators. This can be

solved by coherently positioning the sensors on the

user’s body, as illustrated in Figure 4, so that the

sensors’ ability to detect the gas is more assertive,

thus minimizing the production of false alarms due

to cross-sensitivity.

Figure 4: Sensors distributed on PPE can allow more

assertive measurements. Source: Author, adapted from

(Ara

ujo, 2006) and (Vale, 2015).

6 CONCLUSION

This work investigated technologies used for work in

conﬁned spaces in the industry and described some

promising solutions to support human activities in

these locations. Under these perspectives, it is now in-

tended to analyze and develop augmented reality de-

vices for use in these environments. The current work

in progress by the authors aims to display monitoring

data in a more practical and intuitive way for conﬁned

workers. An example of an application under devel-

opment is the computational coloring of naturally col-

orless gas concentrations in AR glasses for users.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was ﬁnanced in part by the Coordenac¸

de Aperfeic¸oamento de Pessoal de N

ıvel Supe-

rior - Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001, the

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient

ıﬁco

e Tecnol

ogico (CNPQ), the Fundac¸

ao De Am-

paro a Pesquisa Do Estado De Minas Gerais -

FAPEMIG grant code APQ-01331-18, the Instituto

Tecnol

ogico Vale (ITV), the Universidade Federal de

Ouro Preto (UFOP) and Vale S.A.

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